her.
“So you’ve found her,” Hugh said.
The ranger shook his head no. “This would be another one of them, on a rope. A couple from Florida spotted it last night leaving the park. They thought it was normal, just another climber up there. Then they heard about the accident on the late news. We got their call about midnight. It took until now for the guard to bring up one of their big guns.”
“Try now,” someone said. A generator roared to life.
The soldiers tugged at a canvas shell, unveiling a trailer-mounted spotlight. They flipped a switch, and it was as if a false sun had suddenly landed among them. Hugh’s night vision blew to pieces.
They swiveled the machinery around. White light hosed the meadow and trees like a Flash Gordon death ray. In the really old days, rangers would push flaming logs off Yosemite Falls to entertain the tourists. Lewis had toyed with the idea of using the walls for a giant drive-in movie screen. He wanted to show climbing movies, what else. That was in the pre– Eiger Sanction era, when the pickings were slim: Walt Disney’s Third Man on the Mountain, and the Spencer Tracy movie The Mountain, and a sci-fi flick about the yeti. On slack nights, he said they could do slide shows about El Cap on El Cap.
The beam made a round circle on the stone above. It made the hulk of rock seem even more enormous. Hugh heard several eighties hires trying to direct the soldiers’ aim. The soldiers told them to keep their hands off. The circle of light wandered aimlessly for a minute, crisscrossing features famous to climbers, but meaningless to the layman. At last they got oriented, and the beam crept higher, a few feet at a time.
The ranger lifted his binoculars. All eyes focused on the circle. It was like looking through a giant, ungainly microscope.
As best he could, Hugh followed the women’s line of cracks and dihedrals. But without binoculars, and probably even with them, the route kept disintegrating into great blank patches devoid of cracks. Twice the rescuers lost their bearings in the blankness and had to scour the rock for cracks to restore the logic of the women’s ascent.
There was no missing her, once she appeared.
She was dangling upside down at the tip of a rope. The SAR team called back and forth to one another, compiling their individual observations. She looked too still to be alive. They followed the thin thread of rope higher to where it sank into Cyclops Eye. They splashed light into the depression, but saw no sign of the third woman. Maybe she was lying in the woods somewhere.
The ranger lowered his binoculars.
“You mind?” asked Hugh.
Through the binoculars, he saw the woman entangled with rope. A slight breeze rocked her gently back and forth. Her body was less distinct than her shadow, stark black against the brilliant white stone.
“I don’t understand,” Hugh said. “How could I have missed her yesterday? Right underneath them and I didn’t see a thing.”
“None of us did,” the ranger said. “Maybe they tried to evacuate themselves after dark. Maybe they had a second accident.”
Someone flipped on a megaphone and began throwing names at the wall. “Cass. Andie. Cuba.” Three names, not two.
Then it struck Hugh that they still didn’t know whose body he had found yesterday. The megaphone repeated the litany over and over, each monosyllable distinct.
“The meadow’s going to be jammed today,” the ranger said. “One corpse missing, another on a string. A thing like this beats the hell out of reality TV.”
Hugh looked and Rachel’s face was metallic with anger.
“How soon can you get to her?” Hugh asked.
He knew the park service would be swift about it, as much for image as humanity. In one notorious incident on the Eiger, a German alpinist had dangled out of reach on the Eiger for almost a year. But it had been notorious only because it was so public. High peaks, particularly Everest, could be like open graveyards, with bodies
“So you’ve found her,” Hugh said.
The ranger shook his head no. “This would be another one of them, on a rope. A couple from Florida spotted it last night leaving the park. They thought it was normal, just another climber up there. Then they heard about the accident on the late news. We got their call about midnight. It took until now for the guard to bring up one of their big guns.”
“Try now,” someone said. A generator roared to life.
The soldiers tugged at a canvas shell, unveiling a trailer-mounted spotlight. They flipped a switch, and it was as if a false sun had suddenly landed among them. Hugh’s night vision blew to pieces.
They swiveled the machinery around. White light hosed the meadow and trees like a Flash Gordon death ray. In the really old days, rangers would push flaming logs off Yosemite Falls to entertain the tourists. Lewis had toyed with the idea of using the walls for a giant drive-in movie screen. He wanted to show climbing movies, what else. That was in the pre– Eiger Sanction era, when the pickings were slim: Walt Disney’s Third Man on the Mountain, and the Spencer Tracy movie The Mountain, and a sci-fi flick about the yeti. On slack nights, he said they could do slide shows about El Cap on El Cap.
The beam made a round circle on the stone above. It made the hulk of rock seem even more enormous. Hugh heard several eighties hires trying to direct the soldiers’ aim. The soldiers told them to keep their hands off. The circle of light wandered aimlessly for a minute, crisscrossing features famous to climbers, but meaningless to the layman. At last they got oriented, and the beam crept higher, a few feet at a time.
The ranger lifted his binoculars. All eyes focused on the circle. It was like looking through a giant, ungainly microscope.
As best he could, Hugh followed the women’s line of cracks and dihedrals. But without binoculars, and probably even with them, the route kept disintegrating into great blank patches devoid of cracks. Twice the rescuers lost their bearings in the blankness and had to scour the rock for cracks to restore the logic of the women’s ascent.
There was no missing her, once she appeared.
She was dangling upside down at the tip of a rope. The SAR team called back and forth to one another, compiling their individual observations. She looked too still to be alive. They followed the thin thread of rope higher to where it sank into Cyclops Eye. They splashed light into the depression, but saw no sign of the third woman. Maybe she was lying in the woods somewhere.
The ranger lowered his binoculars.
“You mind?” asked Hugh.
Through the binoculars, he saw the woman entangled with rope. A slight breeze rocked her gently back and forth. Her body was less distinct than her shadow, stark black against the brilliant white stone.
“I don’t understand,” Hugh said. “How could I have missed her yesterday? Right underneath them and I didn’t see a thing.”
“None of us did,” the ranger said. “Maybe they tried to evacuate themselves after dark. Maybe they had a second accident.”
Someone flipped on a megaphone and began throwing names at the wall. “Cass. Andie. Cuba.” Three names, not two.
Then it struck Hugh that they still didn’t know whose body he had found yesterday. The megaphone repeated the litany over and over, each monosyllable distinct.
“The meadow’s going to be jammed today,” the ranger said. “One corpse missing, another on a string. A thing like this beats the hell out of reality TV.”
Hugh looked and Rachel’s face was metallic with anger.
“How soon can you get to her?” Hugh asked.
He knew the park service would be swift about it, as much for image as humanity. In one notorious incident on the Eiger, a German alpinist had dangled out of reach on the Eiger for almost a year. But it had been notorious only because it was so public. High peaks, particularly Everest, could be like open graveyards, with bodies
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